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Outside the Spoon Drawer, Naked and Skinless in Search of My Professional Esteem

The Tale of an "Academic Pro"

Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland

This autoethnography explores the pain and unexpectedness of personal and professional learning in being challenged to find an other "voice" after years of being a "responsible anarchist" within the academy’s traditional expectations. It tells of the emotions in setting forth on a self-chosen quest to uncover and understand the history of the author’s shame as a female academic with management responsibility but without a doctorate until relatively late in her career and some of the ways in which she chose unconsciously to ameliorate this along the way. The commitment to persist with the process of writing that explores emotional resistances born of history, images, and experiences of vulnerability was a deeply personal, embodied experience for the author. Indirectly, the experience of the story demonstrates how writing spontaneously and unknowingly with a desire for self-understanding has the power to uncover what goes on below the surface of experience and identity.

Key Words: autoethnography • voice • emotions • shame • writing

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